Kindergarten Twins Multiply but School Does Division

There were a lot of double takes as five sets of twins entered kindergarten at the same Portland, Me., school. “We’ve had twins before, of course, but we never had five sets of them,” said Alan M. Argondizza, principal of Longfellow Elementary School. The twins are Ely and Amos LeBlanc-Simpson; Adrianne and Carrie Locke; Monica and Jessica Wetherington; Eric and Scott Wespi, and Lacey and Jeffrey Smith. But teachers won’t be seeing double. None of the siblings were placed in the same classroom, Argondizza said, in an effort to help the children establish their own identities.

--Kathleen Campbell didn’t have twins, but the new mother still made news. At age 55 years and 141 days, the grandmother delivered a healthy 6-pound, 7-ounce boy, becoming the oldest woman to give birth in Britain. The 65-year-old father, Sydney Campbell, said he was “over the moon.” Mrs. Campbell, who has six other children ranging in age from 16 to 22, gave birth by Caesarean section at Nottingham City Hospital in England. A hospital spokesman said there were no complications in the birth. The record for the oldest woman to give birth in Britain had been held by the late Winifred Wilson of Eccles, England, who gave birth in 1936 at age 55 and three days, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. The Guinness book says the oldest mother was Californian Ruth Alice Kistler, who gave birth to a daughter in Glendale on Oct. 18, 1956. She was 57 years and 129 days old.

--At 100 years, Alf Landon has earned the right to take it easy. So after the 1936 Republican presidential nominee took a telephone call from Vice President George Bush and received old political adversary Hamilton Fish Sr., 98, at his home in Topeka, he decided to rest. The former Kansas governor said he was too tired from the activity surrounding his 100th birthday, which included a visit from President Reagan on Sunday. “I’ll bounce back,” Landon said. “It just takes a little longer when you’re 100.” The conservative Fish, former Republican congressman from New York, had opposed Landon’s nomination for President. But during his visit he said Landon could have won the presidency if the GOP had had more money for his race against Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. Later, Landon declined to go to lunch with friends or to a park to greet Republicans at a birthday party in his honor. In Washington, the Senate passed a resolution sponsored by Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) recognizing Landon as “the grand old man of the GOP.”